


The Headless Monster

by sprl1199



Category: Justice League & Justice League Unlimited (Cartoons)
Genre: First Time, Friendship, Hand Jobs, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 18:55:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sprl1199/pseuds/sprl1199
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a particularly emotional mission, the Flash isn't doing so well.  And if Wally isn't doing well, John isn't doing well.  But then things get a whole lot better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Headless Monster

**Author's Note:**

  * For [akaya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/akaya/gifts).



> Written for Yuletide for akaya, who wanted a distressing mission, John/Wally, an angry Flash, and a John who wasn't quite sure what to make of him.
> 
> Happy Holidays, akaya! I hope this is what you were looking for! Thank you for the opportunity to write in one of my favorite fandoms!

The Headless Monster

It wasn't a good team debriefing.

And usually they _were_ good, no two ways about it. Hawkgirl would say something just a little bit inflammatory with an almost-there smirk on her face and her eyes slid sideways toward GL, and Wally would respond with his hands gesticulating wildly cause he knew the others found it amusing, and J’onn would look on with polite confusion while Supes rolled his eyes and Diana watched with indulgent affection, and even Bats would be standing and scowling, but it would obviously be shielding a reluctant smile that Wally just _knew_ wanted to break out one of these days, and they'd all be together, united in their mission to protect Earth and its inhabitants.

But J’onn and Hawkgirl were still down on Earth monitoring the aftermath, and as for the rest of Wally’s positive associations with team meetings? Yeah, not so much.

"Flash, are you listening?" Superman's voice was inordinately rough and did nothing to ease the tension in the room. 

'Inordinately' rough (Wally had _killed_ his verbal SATs, and let no man, woman, genderless individual, alien, robot, or amorphic entity say otherwise) but not 'unexpectedly' so. Not with all the shouting he'd done that day. Wally could still hear the sound echoing in his ear, replayed at that rapid tempo that characterized all the workings in his head, and it cavorted hand in hand with images that he'd rather not even _remember_ much less dwell on, but he was pretty sure they'd been permanently seared into his brain. One visual in particular—an arm, tiny and bruised, with a hand that clutched a rag doll—kept jumping the queue to flash in his mind over and over again…

Wally was usually very good at intentionally keeping pace with his team—forcibly slowing his speech, his responses, his actions until they fit with the rest of the world—but he seemed to have lost the thread this time, because several seconds had passed outside of Flash-time, and he still hadn't answered Supe's question. 

GL shifted where he was sitting next to Wally, but Wally didn't glance over at him, even though John watching was probably his all-time favorite pastime. But that was for times when John's hair wasn't pebbled with ash and his eyes weren’t remote. For times when Wally had managed to be fast enough to keep people safe. 

Not that he could have managed it on this occasion. Even if he’d run faster than he’d ever run, became fucking _one_ with the fucking speed force, he still wouldn’t have been in time: the damage had been done before any of the Justice League even knew there was a problem.

And there went his thoughts again, flitting off on their own in the space between seconds. If only there was something _happening_ so he didn’t have to just sit here—while everything around him was slow, slow, slow—unable to shut off his brain.

"Flash." Diana called his attention back to the group. Her tone was as gentle and melodic as always, but even she sounded like she might just be nearing...something less than that seemingly unshakable sense of harmony and poise that she effortlessly carried, and Wally finally looked up from where he had been trying to pick the drying mud off his gloves while his thoughts ran away with him. He wished he could wash them. The mud obviously wasn't going to hurt anything, and it wasn't like it was _blood_ , even though it was that brownish red dirt found throughout southeast Asia that was sticky and staining and a bit too close to the color of blood for comfort and really, he shouldn't even be able to _see_ it since his gloves were red also, so it shouldn't be nauseating him at all, even though it was, dammit.

And he could still smell the smoke.

"Of course I'm listening," Wally said, which was kind of a lie, but he’d gotten the gist of the conversation, so yeah. He leaned back in his chair until it creaked slightly in recognition of his presence. The Watchtower had some freaking awesome furniture. He wished whoever furnished his college lecture halls had even an iota of Batman's budget, but speaking of Batman, he was glaring at Wally again and, oh right, the discussion was still happening. "I guess I just don't...I mean, what's there to say? What's the point in talking about it?"

"To stop it from happening again," Superman said shortly and disapprovingly at Wally's question, crossing his arms and squaring his shoulders off to Wally like he was answering a challenge. Supes hadn't sat down since they returned, and Wally could see the tension of his massive frame coiled in his legs, like he was ready to spring up and fly away. Wally didn't fault him for wanting to pick a fight.

Still, that didn't mean Wally would let it be with him. He had a uniform to wash.

"What exactly do you think we can do?" Wally asked, returning Superman's glare with one of his own and crossing his own arms for good measure. Wally pushed back to make the chair squeak again and saw out of the corner of his eye as Batman's mouth shifted a millimeter to hold back a grimace. It didn't make Wally feel as victorious as usual. 

"We can draw attention to the issue," Diana answered, even though Wally had asked Superman. "We can alert the local government to the tensions in the area so they can take initiative to address the problem."

Wally snorted. It wasn't what he would characterize as his typical response to Diana, and it was _bitter_ , but he couldn't seem to stop the words from coming out of his mouth. "You think the local government isn't already aware of the problem?"

Diana frowned. "I realize it's complicated--"

"It wasn't complicated at all." Wally cut her off. "It was two groups of people taking advantage of the chaos during the Sartauren ship attack to execute"—he flinched at his word choice, but it was so quick no one else noticed—“plans to up the ante in a longstanding feud over land or water or religion or whatever else and hurt people who have been their neighbors for decades.”

“We’re all upset, Flash,” Superman snapped, and _yeah_ , Wally had noticed. “That’s why we need to come up with a plan to get a handle on this.”

“Get a handle on it? You can't fly up there, shake your finger at them like they're in kindergarten and _bam_ , suddenly there's a peace accord in place that everyone signs onto. This isn’t something you just have a meeting and ‘get a handle’ on."

Superman's pinched expression grew even more pinched, which was frankly impressive. "No one is saying it will be that simple, but we won't know that we can't help unless we at least try. We have to do _something_. We can't let it happen again."

" _We can't stop it_!" It was only after he said it that Wally realized his voice came out a bit too close to hysterical for his liking. At least he didn't slip and start speed talking this time. Though usually when he did that, his team just assumed he'd yelped or burped or something. In this case that might have been preferable, but whatever, Wally read the news and donated to Human Rights Watch. He knew what he was talking about. "It's going to happen again and again, all over the world, because sometimes human beings just _suck_ and the problems that need addressing aren't things a few well-meaning outsiders are going to be able to fix just by showing up with good intentions! They’re not going to stop hurting each other!"

His major was in chemistry, and Wally had plans to go into forensic science to help catch bad guys (outside of, ya know, his other job) but sometimes he wondered if he'd be doing the world more of a service by studying political science or fucking _psychology_.

Or maybe he could take up Jim—another volunteer at Keystone City's orphanage—on the offer to join his demolition company.

Wally zipped out of the room before he could reflect on the underlying symbolism of the thought, because he had reputation for not being a particularly reflective guy at the best of times, and what sort of times were these where the thought of destroying things sounded fucking _satisfactory_? Besides, his internal clock was finally back on line and was telling him that enough time had passed for his friends to muster a response to his rant, and he really wasn't interested in hearing it at the moment.

So he zipped out. But not so quickly that he didn't register John's face drawn in startled confusion: the deep, frowning furrows on his forehead aimed at Wally's empty chair and his lips pulled tight with concern.

**

[2 hours later]

When John found Wally later that night, the Scarlet Speedster was at the Keystone City playground. On a swing. Unmoving.

To John, it was the last of these that was disconcerting. He wouldn't have been surprised to catch Wally hurtling himself down the slide or dangling upside down on the jungle gym. But instead, the youngest member of the team was sitting silently on the blue plastic swing seat, eyes trained on the sandbox, and John felt a small whisper of dread unfurl in his stomach. That wasn’t his Wally.

 _This_ Wally, the Wally he'd met today somewhere between Earth and the Watchtower, he wasn't sure what to do with. Lightly slapping him on the back of the head and telling him to get his hummingbird brain back on track didn't seem appropriate, and without anyone else there to lend a hand, John had no idea what to say. He'd teleported directly to Keystone City once the debriefing—laughable term in this case, though Superman and Diana had clearly made an effort to pull them together—was over, his only thought to get to Wally as quickly as possible and shake some of that happy optimism back into him. To keep at it until he was recognizable as the friend that John had grown to value so highly.

Maybe he should have brought Diana. Or Shayera and her mace, should one specific red-head need some sense literally knocked into it. Not that John expected violence…

_(though there had been that one moment when Wally laid desperately pained eyes on the apprehended ringleaders of the violence, and for an instant John had remembered that, if he’d wanted to, Wally could have reached them and enacted whatever punishment he deemed fit before anyone in the League could have even thought to stop him, much less actually do it, and it was a frightening thought, but also headying, to think of all that power tightly leashed by an all-encompassing, gentle conscience John had never seen equaled)_

…But at the end of the day, John was there on his own. And Wally had obviously seen him already—flying with his ring wasn't the stealthiest mode of travel—and for all his faults, John had never been a coward, so he took a breath and strode over to the swing set.

"You eaten?" John winced internally even as he said it, but it was as good an opening as any, and getting Wally away from the empty, dimly-lit park, maybe with a box or six of pizza and a DVD or two to somewhere where Wally could get back to _normal_ , suddenly seemed like the most worthy goal John had had in a while.

"Is everyone mad at me?" Wally asked instead of answering. He voice was desolate, but he didn't sound like he'd been crying, which was good, because John had even less of an idea of what to do with a crying Wally than the angry one he'd met that day. 

He'd seen Wally tear up only a couple of times since they'd met: once when he talked about his uncle and once when a small creature in the Totzyos galaxy (it looked like a raccoon crossed with an iguana of all things) had been killed by artillery after following Wally into their battle with a local overlord and springing to his defense. In both cases, John had been left with a crushingly overwhelming feeling of helpless empathy that struck him to his core and left the ring whispering in his mind to remind him that he was completely capable of destroying or planet or two, if that would somehow help.

So a non-crying Wally was always a step up in John's book, and—angry, empty-voiced speedster or not—internally he relaxed slightly.

"Why would they be mad at you?" John asked patiently, willing to see where this led.

"For running out before the briefing was over," Wally’s mouth turned down slightly in a frown, matching his drooped shoulders and lowered eyes. "I know Supes hates that."

John relaxed another notch at the use of the nickname, even though Wally still hadn’t really looked at him, and his body language bellowed deafeningly of unhappiness. 

"They're not mad, hotshot. Just worried about you.” I am too, John didn't say but thought so fervently he was almost surprised it didn’t trigger his ring. And as cool as he was trying to play it, even to himself, he actually was worried. Desperately.

Seeing Wally earlier that day as he dug through charred rubble that smeared his arms with soot, John had practically had to use his power to root himself in place just to stop from wrapping his friend up in an unbreakable shield and carrying him from the area, carrying him _away_. Anything to stop Wally from looking around him so frantically, broken heart obvious even through his mask. It had struck John far harder than any monster (and he counted the human ones in that tally as well) he had ever stood against.

Maybe John was the one who needed Hawkgirl’s mace to knock some sense into himself. He _knew_ better than this.

John swallowed down the emotion rising in his throat and consciously ripped his gaze away from where it was hovering on Wally's left cheekbone for the third time that day. It had been bruised earlier—picked up during the fight with the Sartauren, not during the chaos they discovered once the obvious threat had passed—but the younger man's accelerated healing had removed all traces of it. 

Still, it lingered in John's memory along with the all-too-vivid reminder of Wally standing forlornly in the devastated village: a bright spot of color among half-collapsed buildings coated with ash and dust. Wally had moved so quickly, the contaminants floating in the air hadn't seemed to touch him at all.

"Hey, you okay?" Wally asked, and John must have made a sound or something at the memory, because Wally was finally looking up at him, frowning from his perch on the swing.

"How about you?" John asked instead of answering. He'd be okay if Wally was okay. _When_ Wally was okay. The rest he could sort out later.

Wally shifted restlessly on the swing for a moment, then—to John’s unmitigated relief—gave up his uncharacteristic bout of stillness and stood.

"I've been better," he said frankly, with a small, slightly wry smile. 

John remained silent, knowing that he didn’t actually need to voice the question that was circling in his head and not wanting to break the chain of thought he could almost see churning in the other man’s head, and after another moment of silence, Wally breathed out, a quick exhalation of frustration and sadness. 

"I'm sorry about earlier today,” Wally said apologetically, glancing down at his hands. “I don’t actually believe that we should just throw up our hands and say there’s nothing we can do. I’m just-, I'm _angry_. I’m so angry at them. They were being attacked by something outside of their control, something that could have killed them all, but instead of helping each other, they took the opportunity to _hurt people_. How could they do that, John?" He looked up at John, and even though the mask hid the bright green eyes, John had no trouble picturing them. The expression in them. "How could they?"

Wally didn't seem to expect an answer, which was good, because John didn't have one to give him. After years of fighting darkness wherever he could--first as a Marine and then as a Lantern--he'd ceased to be surprised by the horrors people could perpetrate on one another. But he knew Wally had nothing approaching John's slightly jaded eye, and he could only stand there mutely as his best friend struggled to wrap his mind around motivations to violence he (God willing) would never be able to comprehend. 

In the silence, John heard the soft roar of cars from the interstate beyond the wooded green space that shielded the park: a cocoon of seeming safety that John ached to be reality.

"People can do better," Wally finally said flatly into the night air. "They _should_ do better."

John took a step closer, pulled in by the pain Wally was transmitting with his stance: his long, lithely muscled frame curled in on itself and his fists clenched tightly. He rested his hand on Wally's tense shoulder, and, really, what was there to say to that? "Yeah, they should."

Wally's lip shook very slightly, and John gave in at last to the impulse he'd been fighting all day, drawing the other man in against his chest and wrapping his arms around him tightly. 

Wally came easily and relaxed at once, dropping his head to John's shoulder and speaking into his neck as the tension went out of his frame. "I don't usually get this mad. I don't know what to do with it."

His emotional equilibrium was restored the moment Wally stepped into his embrace, and John chuckled at Wally’s statement, even though it wasn't actually funny. He shifted to loop one of his arms comfortably around Wally's waist while the other traveled a hand up and down the slender back, soothing with his body where his words seemed inadequate. "I hear running is good for relieving stress."

Wally huffed an exhale of silent laughter against his neck, and John broke into goose bumps. "Cute, GL. Really." Wally paused briefly, then continued in a vaguely embarrassed voice. "I tried that first, as soon as I left the Watchtower, but since the only thing that can keep up with me is _me_ , and I was trying to get _away_ from me, well, you can guess how well it worked." Wally gave a small shrug that, pressed up together as they were, sparked a gentle humming in John's frame.

The use of Wally's favored nickname for him signaled to John their firm return to familiar ground, and he let himself relax fully, pulling Wally even closer (ignoring the voice in his head the gibbered that he was showing too much, giving himself away) and allowing himself to bask in the joy of having _his_ Wally returned to him.

Which, come to think of it, maybe there actually was something John could say here to help.

“I think it’s good you feel the way you do,” John said quietly into the cowl-covered head on his shoulder, and Wally pulled back a half step to blink at him in obvious confusion.

“You think it’s good I’m pissed off?” Wally asked doubtfully. “I almost ripped into Superman today! Verbally, but still: only a moron would poke at Big Blue when he’s already upset.”

“No, hear me out. You’re angry,” John allowed with a small smile, letting the obvious opportunity for humor slide, “but you’re also sad. You’re sad because those people today violated the expectations you have for how human beings should behave toward each other.” He reached up and oh so lightly touched the ridge of Wally’s cheekbone, mapping where the bruise had been and begging with his eyes for Wally to hear him and believe. “The fact that you have these expectations, that you expect people to live well and do good, that’s a very good thing. It’s when you give up thinking it’s possible for humanity to do better that the real problem begins. The world needs people like you.”

There was silence for a few moments--the soft sound of the cars audible again--while Wally stood there looking at John with his head cocked to the side, as though trying to figure something out. Then he began to smile. His eyes were still covered by the mask, but from the clues John could see, the grin breaking out over Wally’s face was one of his most dazzling.

“And what about you?” Wally asked.

John was still caught up in the smile. “What?”

Wally closed the half step of distance he’d put between them, and his smile shifted to something that was just as dazzling but spoke to John in a completely different way, and _warning_ Stewart, danger ahead. “Do _you_ need people like me?” If the intention in Wally’s voice wasn’t already obvious, he made it so with the hand he settled on the back of John’s neck, fingers lightly teasing the skin he found there.

This was a bad idea, and John would be able to remember those reasons he’d told himself again and again about why the Flash was off limits just as soon as Wally stopped standing so close. “This isn’t a good idea,” John managed to say.

“Says who? The good idea police? I’m pretty sure we trump them with our orbiting satellite headquarters.” Wally shifted minutely closer to align their bodies more strategically. Like John had suspected, they fit perfectly.

“You’re younger than I am,” John pointed out. That was one of the reasons he had never taken this step, he was pretty sure, but it didn’t stop his hands from settling on Wally’s hips. 

“I’m not that young,” Wally murmured against John’s lips as he went up on his tiptoes. 

John couldn’t have answered if he’d wanted to, given that his lips were otherwise occupied, and the vast majority of his mental processors were hijacked by the sensation of Wally’s firm body pressed against him. The kiss, which started as a brief contact between them, swiftly expanded in both length and heat. Then Wally made a low, sweet sound, and suddenly stopping this was the last thing on John’s mind.

John used his grip to pull Wally’s hips firmly into his own, and Wally let out a guttural, broken groan, at the same time giving John an invitation to his mouth, which he immediately accepted. Wally’s hands were clutching at the shorn hair on the back of John’s skull and one of his hard thighs had somehow migrated between John’s own to press teasingly when Wally pulled abruptly back.

“Fuck, John,” Wally panted, lips parted and swollen from their kissing. John reached for him again, only to find himself suddenly thrown over a red clad shoulder, bouncing along at a high rate of speed (though well slower than Wally’s average, in deference to John’s non-speedster sensibilities).

“Wa-“ John got out before he was back on the ground, combat training kicking into gear and shrieking at him to be aware of his surroundings at all times as he looked around and took in…the woods next to the park?”

Wally flushed at John’s raised eyebrow. “We’re in uniform, so I couldn’t take you to my apartment. Besides, I’ve stumbled across teenagers in here a couple of times, and I figure they wouldn’t be out here if there was anything we needed to worry about, like poison ivy. Or snakes. Or, well, whatever. I’ll check to make sure there’s no one else out here." A blur of red. "K, we’re good.” With that, he launched himself at John again, scrambling at his cowl to pull it down and _finally_ there were the green eyes that John loved so much, even though they closed almost immediately as Wally kissed him again.

Getting with the program, John spotted a likely looking plot of grass without too much underbrush and hoisted Wally up enough in his arms—Wally made a sound of approval—to stagger towards it.

They basically fell together, but John caught himself enough on his hands to avoid falling on his smaller friend and held himself above Wally for a moment, allowing himself to fully take in the mussed red hair and bright grin.

“Hi there,” Wally said with a smile, eyes glowing.

“Hello,” John returned, leaning down to gently kiss one of the freckles on Wally’s nose.

When John kissed Wally next, it was with intent rather than the torrent of undammed attraction he’d allowed to sweep him along before, and Wally shivered, deepening the kiss and chasing John’s tongue back into his mouth where they dueled to Wally’s rhythm for a few moments. 

Wally’s hand hovered over the closure to John’s uniform. “Okay?” And that he'd even have to _ask_.

In response, John reached for the zipper on Wally's uniform leggings, sliding it down to loosen them enough for John to reach his hand inside past the cup and grab him firmly.

Wally howled, and John muffled it with his tongue. Wally was already fully hard in John's hand, and feeling the heat of him John's cock, first stirred when Wally kissed him, hardened fully. 

John actually managed to get in a languid stroke or two before Wally scrambled to unzip John’s trousers and yank them down John’s upper thighs. He reached instantaneously for John’s erection only to pull back abruptly, remove his gloves in a blur of color and speed, and then reach for John again. John shifted to help him, and within moments, they had a mutual hold on one another.

“What do you want?” John asked, his voice rougher than he’d heard it in a while. His hand was already stroking again on Wally’s cock—long, lean and beautiful like the rest of him—and Wally whined deep in his throat. John hadn't been this turned on while (basically) fully clothed since he was a teenager.

“Just you,” Wally gasped. His eyes were bright with moisture, and his eyelashes were clumping into vivid points that framed the green. John had to kiss him again, so he did, letting his hand move as it wanted.

Wally matched him and kept trying to speed up the rhythm, but John held a slow, _merciless_ pace and was rewarded by Wally’s moans and whimpers of “faster, damn you,” and “John” and “please, John, _please_.”

It was the last that did it, and John sped up as he grunted his frustration at the tightness of Wally’s uniform, wishing he had taken the time to undo the top as well. Usually he appreciated the fit and the view it gave him, but now he wanted to push it up to bite at Wally’s chest and nibble his neck, and confirm to himself that every _single_ inch of him was unbruised and perfect, but there wasn’t any give in the fabric, and John was too far gone to search for the closure. As John sped up, Wally began to come undone, dropping his hold of John (which was fine with John, as he shifted to thrusting against the hollow of Wally’s hip) and coming with a shout, head thrown back and neck arched, and at that point John couldn’t hold it in any more.

He thrust once, twice against Wally, the warmth of his skin and the combined scent of their bodies branding itself into his memory and hopefully deposing some of the images of the day. Then he dropped, a languid, sweaty heap with his head on Wally’s covered chest.

After a few moments where they both caught their breath, Wally began to run his fingers again over the back of John’s skull. “Mmm, I could get used to this,” Wally said with lazy satisfaction.

John was almost afraid to ask. “Which part? And don’t you dare say the forest setting.”

“No, I think we should count that as checked off the list and never revisit it. I think the grass is making me itchy. I meant you and me, naked together.”

“We’re not naked now,” John pointed out, and they weren’t, though John’s ass was definitely getting a bit chilly now that they weren’t moving, and John spared a moment to hope no unsuspecting teenagers had wandered into the woods while they'd been otherwise engaged. At least Wally was mostly covered, and John would get the energy to pull his pants back up any moment now.

Wally’s hand landed on said ass with a sudden smack, and John yelped in surprise. “Up and at ‘em, GL,” Wally said gleefully, pushing against his shoulder. “We got places to go, people to see, and take-out to order. I call Mexican.”

John unwillingly labored himself to his feet and stretched out his back. Wally was right: a recap of the forest floor was definitely out. “Mexican food, hmm? What if I wanted pizza?” he asked, giving Wally a hand up from the ground and fixing both of their clothing. He was sticky and would no doubt be uncomfortable later, but right then he couldn't bring himself to care.

Wally’s answering smile was blinding, and the kiss he dropped on John’s lips was so unbearably sweet, there wasn’t a single part of John that could regret what had just happened. “Then we get both, you pay, and I take you home with me for a well-deserved joint shower session that will be loud enough to make the neighbors bang on the walls.”

Which was pretty much exactly what happened.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a Charlie Chaplin quote: "Man as an individual is a genius. But men in the mass form the headless monster, a great, brutish idiot that goes where prodded."
> 
> Though not based on any real event, the idea for the mission that affected Flash (and John) so badly was sparked by reading about the violence in Ramu (Bangladesh) in September 2012.


End file.
